
450 | BOTANICAL GAZETTE — [DECEMBER 
The supposed changes of level of the Atlantic coast have 
interested me for several years. A study of the form of Nantasket 
Beach, near Boston, showed that this portion of the coast could 
not have subsided more than a meter during the last 1000 or 2000 
years.2 An examination of certain shore line changes produced at 
Scituate, also near Boston, by the great storm of 1898, showed 
that all the appearances of a subsidence of the coast could be 
produced by an increased height of high tide resulting from a 
change in the form of the shore line. Finally, aided by a grant 
from the Shaler Memorial Fund of Harvard University, by the 
excellent services of my three assistants, Messrs. D. C. BARTON, 
J. K. Wricut, and G. B. Reep, and by the cordial cooperation 
of a large number of geologists, engineers, and officials of state 
and national surveys, I have been able to study the most important 
localities on the Atlantic coast from the northern side of Prince 
Edward Island to the Florida Keys, as well as a number of places 
on the coasts of Sweden, England, and Holland. The results of 
these studies seem to me to justify, for the Atlantic coast of North 
America, the following conclusions: (1) There can have been no 
long-continued progressive subsidence of this coast at a rate of 
20cm. or more per century, during the last few thousand years. 
The coast has remained at least comparatively stable throughout 
this period. (2) The coast cannot have subsided as much as 
30 cm. in the last century. (3) There is no satisfactory evidence 
of any subsidence whatever during the last few thousand years. 
In the present paper no attempt is made to consider all phases 
of the interesting problem of recent coastal subsidence; attention 
is here directed exclusively to the consideration of some of the 
botanical phenomena supposed to prove such a subsidence. If 
apology is needed for my venturing to discuss botanical phases of 
the question, and in a botanical journal, my plea is that J am a 
firm believer in what has been aptly termed cross-fertilization of 
the sciences. The study of a complex problem has forced me to 
3 Jounson, D. W., and REEp, W. G., The form of Nantasket Beach. ‘Jour. 
Geol. 18:162—189. 1910. 
4 Jounson, D. W., The supposed recent subsidence of the Massachusetts — 
New Jersey coasts. Science N.S. 32:721-723. 1910; also The botanical evidence © 
coastal subsidence. Science N.S. 33: 300-302. IQIt. 


